Move #1: Introduction to Psalm 68 and Movement of the Psalm
As is often in my preparation, I settled on my scripture texts, sermon title, and main themes for this sermon several months ago. Then, I started studying it a bit more carefully in recent days.

Reviewing the study notes in the Jewish Study Bible,[^1] I soon realized I had my work cut out for me. One study note indicated that many interpreters think that Psalm 68 is the most difficult Psalm in the whole Psalter. Fun times.

The Psalm is so disjointed that some interpreters think it may actually be a combination of numerous psalms or even something of an index of opening lines from other psalms. Disjoined Hebrew. Amazing!

Another commentator notes that Psalm 68 is “fraught with interpretive” difficulties, including its use of one-of-a-kind words, obscure allusions, unknown geographical locations, and a less-than-clear structure.[^2] Thank you, Jesus, for obscurity!

But all is not lost. Old Testament scholar, Konrad Schaefer,[^3] suggest that the overall impression of the Psalm is that of a “triumphal parade” that culminates in Zion: the Psalm moves from Egypt through the wilderness in verses 7–8 into the promised land in verses 10–16. It ends in Zion with God’s people celebrating at the Temple in verses 17–27.

In poetic and symbolic fashion, Psalm 68 retells key moments in the history of God’s dealings with the people of Israel: rescue from slavery, provision and guidance in the wilderness, making a way out of no way that eventually leads to the Promised Land.

It may be disjointed and unclear in places. But Psalm 68 is rather traditional on the whole. It reminds readers, both ancient and modern, of what God is like and how God works in the world. And it invites us all to experience jubilant joy, a solid joy that does depend on our circumstances but on the character and actions of God.

Move #2: The Fleeting Nature of Wicked and Jubilant Joy
Psalm 68 opens with a plea, a demand almost: “Let God rise up, let his enemies be scattered.” The speaker implores God to make the wicked disappear like smoke driven by the wind or like wax melting in the presence of fire. The imagery of smoke and melting wax indicate that the wicked ones, and wickedness by extension, have no permanence, no staying power.

And we all know there’s only one good image for illustrating this, illustrating God’s holy presence melting the wicked like wax: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. The wax-melting holiness of God in Psalm 68 is perfectly reflected in the face-melting power of God in the famous Stephen Spielberg film. You know the scene. The villains recover the lost Ark of the Covenant. And as they unbox it and seek to open it, their faces melt like wax. Great special effects for the 80s, am I right? And maybe the source of a few nightmares.

Whether we’re sticking close to the language of Ps 68 or riffing off of the imagery in the Indiana Jones film, the image of the impermanence of wickedness stands in tension with much of lived experience. Wickedness and evil don’t seem fleeting at all; they often seem buttressed and unassailable.

Death and war and illness seem so real, so established. Each week in our prayer requests we learn of another cancer diagnosis. Another broken marriage. Another estranged family member. Wickedness and evil don’t seem to melt like wax near a flame; they seem as solid and unmoveable as Stone Mountain.

Our faith in the living God, the God of the empty tomb, tempers our experience of wickedness and evil in the world. It doesn’t call us to ignore our experience of the permanence of evil. Instead, it pushes us to prayer. To lament. And so, our Psalm opens with pleading exhortation: Let God rise up. Let God show up as redeemer, as healer, as savior, as Lord.

And it is right in the middle of this contrast between faith and lived experience that the Psalmist mentions joy. In Hebrew and in English, verse 3 literally bursts with references to joy. But it also bursts with exhortation: let the righteous be joyful, let them exult, let them be jubilant with joy. Earlier in verse 1, the author pleads with God. Here, the author prods the hearers. Let joy be your way of life. Root yourself in joy.

So much of Christian life seems stuck between these two exhortations: between the, “Let God rise up,” and “let the righteous be joyful.” Between the pleading for God’s action, the prayerful waiting for God to show up. And the command to be joyful. The command to be jubilant with joy.

But how can we do that? When the evil of the world seems so solid? When violence seems unending? When grief seems to offer no relief? When discord and division infiltrate every corner of our lives? When our own sinful ways cling heavily on our hearts? When our rush to judgment of others or our impulsive habits seem unchangeable?

The Psalm invites us into jubilant joy. A joy that does not depend on us. Or the highs and lows of our lives. Or even the observable elimination of evil. The Psalm invites us to jubilant joy that depends entirely on the character of God.

Move #3: Cloud rider vs. care for the least
The hearers of this Psalm can and should be joyful because the God they serve is Mighty. The Psalmist offers the image of God riding on the clouds to illustrate God’s might.

This imagery borrows from Canaanite mythology. The most powerful Canaanite god, Ba’al, is often called the “rider of the clouds.” Ba’al was seen to be the god of fertility, storms, and agriculture. Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, Ba’al and the God of Israel are rivals.

In Psalm 68, the God of Israel overshadows Ba’al, while assimilating many of the god’s characteristics. It is a little religious one-upsmanship. In Psalm 68, God rides on the clouds, not Ba’al. And God provides rain, not Ba’al. The God of Israel takes the place of Ba’al as the superior divine being. And all of this is meant to emphasize God’s power and might, God’s otherness and transcendence. The righteous can be joyful because God rules the skies and dethrones any other would-be deities.

But there’s a tension built into Psalm 68. Yes, the God of Israel is powerful and mighty. Yes, the God of Israel surfs on the clouds and is enthroned on the storms.

But this God, this living God revealed by Scripture, is the same God who stoops low to care for the marginalized and oppressed. God uses God’s power to care for the downtrodden. The cloud-rider is the God who steps down to be the father of orphans. The divine warrior whose very presence shakes the earth lowers himself to become the protector of widows. The God who dwells on high is the very same God who provides a home for the homeless and frees prisoners. The hearers of Psalm 68 are commanded to rejoice, not only because God is mighty, but because God moves in loving compassion toward the least and the lost. The God who is radically other shows up by caring for the marginalized and left behind.

Move #4: Israel’s God vs. the involvement of all kingdoms (particularity and universality)
The righteous are invited into jubilant joy because of who God is. God is mighty. But also loving and compassionate. But there is more to this joy rooted in God’s character.

There is no mistaking the fact that the Psalmist describes the God of Israel. Not some nebulous or amorphous deity. Not the God of natural religion or the God of the philosophers. The God of Israel. The God who created and sustains the earth. The God who created Adam and Eve, and breathed life into the nostrils of the first humans. The God of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar. The God of Exodus and the Promised Land. The God of priests, prophets, and kings. Psalm 68 rehearses the particular actions of a particular God for the sake of a particular people.

But that’s not all that Psalm 68 imagines. As we near the end of the Psalm, the particularity of Israel and Israel’s God is disrupted by the presence of the kingdoms of the whole earth singing the praise of God. This scene of international, multilingual praise of God is found elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, especially in the prophetic literature. Isaiah 2 and Micah 4 both say that “in days to come,” all nations will come to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. There they will learn God’s ways. The many nations make their way to the particular house of the God of Jacob.

There is a tension between the particularity of God’s dealing with Israel and the universality of God’s dealing with the nations of the world. And this tension offers us two important reasons for joy as Christians readers of Holy Scripture.

First, we rejoice over our inclusion in God’s covenant promises to Israel. We should always remember that, unless we are ethnically Jewish, we are Gentiles. We don’t supplant or replace Israel.

We were outsiders. As Ephesians puts it, we were by nature aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise. By God’s grace, we wild branches have been grafted into the olive branch of Israel, which God curated throughout the ages.

God’s yes to the multinational, multilingual community of God is not a backup plan; it’s not a change in direction. It’s a fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham that through him, through the particularity of his seed and his story, all nations of the world would be blessed, all nations of the world would come to worship and love and trust and follow the living God revealed by Scripture.

Here’s a second lesson: joy in God’s generosity should limit our tendency toward grumpy self-righteousness. If we really get it, if we really understand just how much God loves us and acts for our behalf, there’s no reason for self-righteousness or for us to think we have some edge on God’s mysterious ways.

This is a lesson illustrated by the prophet Jonah. Not just the big fish or the adventure on the sea of children’s Bibles. But the story of Jonah’s calling to preach of God’s impending judgment on the people of Ninevah. His attempt to get away from that call. And his disappointment and despair and grumpy self-righteousness when the people of Ninevah, his sworn enemies, actually repent and change their ways in response to his message.

There’s this image of the prophet, sitting under a solitary tree, all in his feelings because God’s wide and extravagant and surprising and subversive mercy extends even to the Ninevites. Even to his enemies. Jubilant joy makes room for that fact that God’s mercy and grace will likely include people that we don’t think deserve it, people who we think could never be worthy of God’s love or grace or acceptance. Jubilant joy warns us against limiting God’s promises and purposes to our nation or our denomination, to our political party or to our theological tribe, to those who worship like us or read Scripture just like us.

Friends, much of our Christian lives fall between the pleading for God’s action, the prayerful waiting for God to show up, and the command to be joyful. Psalm 68 invites us into jubilant joy. A joy that does not depend on us. It invites into a joy rooted in who God is: the cloud-riding, mighty, totally-other God who stoops low, embraces the widows and the orphans. The God who offers redeeming, rescuing, releasing love to all, even those we might think of as enemies. Let us wait on this God and live into jubilant joy. Amen.

[^1]: The Jewish Study Bible, ed. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

[^2]: J. Clinton McCann, Jr., “Commentary on Psalm 68:1–10, 32–25,” Working Preacher. Link: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/seventh-sunday-of-easter/commentary-on-psalm-681-10-32-35-6

[^3]: Konrad Schaefer, Psalms (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001), 163–164. Quoted in McCann, “Commentary on Psalm 68:1–10, 32–35).